The search for life on ocean worlds
NASA has formed the Network for Ocean Worlds (NOW) to advance comparative studies to characterize Earth and other ocean worlds across their interiors, oceans, and cryospheres; to investigate their habitability; to search for biosignatures; and to understand life—in relevant ocean world analogues and beyond. The network is designed to accelerate ocean worlds research by facilitating communication among active research teams funded across NASA divisions and by expanding community-wide engagement.
Team members will investigate the diversity of physical and chemical conditions on ocean worlds and how their evolution may support conditions suitable to sustain life by identifying ocean worlds, characterizing their oceans, evaluating their habitability, searching for life, and ultimately attempting to understand any life found there. NOW will also facilitate the development of future NASA missions to Ocean Worlds, beginning with Europa Clipper, and will create a network of scientists and technologists that will help accelerate NASA’s Ocean Worlds program by providing a forum for exchange of ideas and learning across the interdisciplinary spectrum of backgrounds and perspectives represented within the network of NASA-funded ocean worlds investigators.
Objectives
- Identify and stimulate novel directions of inquiry through enhanced communication within NASA’s ocean worlds PI community.
- Pursue activities that both reveal and address critical knowledge gaps in ocean worlds research.
- Stimulate and facilitate new ocean worlds collaborations to undertake high-impact interdisciplinary research.
- Identify and integrate research on Earth and other ocean worlds (e.g. oceans, their interiors, and the cryosphere) to catalyze synergistic studies that identify the conditions and potential for life.
- Cultivate and augment the training of a new generation of interdisciplinary ocean worlds researchers.
Three key areas of interest
The Network for Ocean Worlds will help guide the search for life beyond Earth by broadening the base of oceanographic expertise throughout astrobiology, but particularly in three key areas:
Geophysics
Exploring the distinct geophysical evolution of ice-covered ocean worlds and the processes occurring at their ice-ocean and ocean-rock interfaces provides unique opportunities for comparative studies throughout the solar system, especially in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Ocean Systems
Ocean worlds provide a first opportunity for comparative studies between Earth and other planets that are not only critical to understanding habitability beyond Earth but also to a better understanding of Earth’s ability to sustain life through time.
Life
Analog and theoretical studies of resource exchange, the generation of life-supporting energy—especially at rock-water and ice-ocean interfaces, and signs of life in Earth’s cryosphere and ocean will advance our understanding of life on Earth and on ocean worlds.
Co-Lead Investigators
Alyssa Rhoden
Southwest Research Institute
Chris German
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
https://directory.whoi.edu/profile/cgerman/
Chris German is a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), where he uses his expertise to explore for and study seafloor fluid flow systems (hydrothermal vents, cold seeps) across a spectrum of geologic diversity. He is particularly interested in the geologic controls of such systems and their impacts on planet-scale biogeochemical cycles, and how they may serve as analogs relevant to the search for life on other ocean worlds. He previously served as the chief scientist for the U.S. National Deep Submergence Facility and continues to develop new tools, vehicles, and methodologies to improve the efficiency of deep ocean exploration. In addition to the Network for Ocean Worlds, German also leads NASA’s Exploring Ocean Worlds ICAR project, a theoretical approach to predicting which ocean worlds have the greatest potential to host life and to revealing evidence for that extant life to future space missions.
Alison Murray
Desert Research Institute
http://www.dri.edu/directory/4776-alison-murray
Alison is a molecular microbial ecologist and biological oceanographer at the Desert Research Institute (DRI). Her research focuses on genomic and molecular biological approaches to describe the diversity of life and to understand the evolutionary history, ecological roles, and physiology of free-living and symbiotic microorganisms, several of which are considered to be at the extremes of where life exists. She has also developed new tools to study microorganisms in their natural environment, eliminating the need for cultivation in the lab. Murray has been involved in NASA's new Ocean Worlds program and was co-chair of the Europa Lander Science Definition Team.
Kevin Arrigo
Stanford University
Kevin is a biological oceanographer at Stanford University. He studies the microbial ecology of polar ecosystems to better understand their role in marine food webs, nutrient cycling, and productivity. His research focuses on photosynthetic organisms living in the sea ice and the ocean and how they are able to thrive in such extreme polar conditions. He was the lead investigator on the recent ICESCAPE project to the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean, the first NASA-funded field program, as well as its follow-on, SUBICE.